No Place For 'For Sale' Sign On Plum Island

COMMENTARY

Plum Island, an 843-acre island off the North Fork of Long Island, is owned… (Wikimedia Commons )

July 05, 2013|By LEAH SCHMALZ | COMMENTARY, The Hartford Courant

Plum Island — located off Orient Point, N.Y., within Long Island Sound's "Race" — is a cultural, historical and environmental haven — a rare place in danger of being lost.

It was there, 12 miles from Connecticut, that the first battle between Colonial and British troops took place during the Revolutionary War. It's home to historic Plum Island Light and to Fort Terry, which provided essential defenses for the East Coast from the Spanish–American War to World War II. Then it became the Plum Island Animal Disease Laboratory, a high-security federal research center. The lab's work has meant that for six decades the entire 843-acre island was off limits to humans, except those working there, and that restriction created a de facto wildlife refuge.

The sanctuary includes nine miles of wild beach, dune and bluff, an unusual assortment of uplands, and tidal and fresh water marshes. It's a breeding site for threatened birds such as piping plovers, and hosts the largest seal haul-out in southern New England.

When our federal and state governments identified the 33 last great places around the Sound, Plum Island and the nearby Gull Islands — which together host the Western Hemisphere's largest colony of roseate terns — were recognized as an "exemplary" habitat deserving of special protection. It's of international conservation importance, and one of the very last large, undisturbed, wild coastal systems in the highly urbanized Long Island Sound region.

And now, the federal government is hoisting a "For Sale" sign.

The government plans to move the research facility to Kansas, and Congress mandated that the government's real estate agent — the General Services Administration — sell Plum Island to help finance the new campus. This could mean most of the island is sold to the highest bidder and carved up for housing. Before that can happen, the agency is required by law to thoroughly analyze the environmental implications of a sale. This is where things get messy. The congressional mandate gives the agency wiggle room. It doesn't dictate "the who" or "how much;" even more important, it says that any sale must "protect the government interest."

Time and again, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and a host of New York and Connecticut agencies have proven the financial, ecological and historic governmental interests in preserving Plum Island. They are joined by the members of the Preserve Plum Island Coalition and local officials from New York and Connecticut in opposing the island's sale.

Sadly, judging from General Services Administration's recent report recommending a full-speed-ahead, unrestricted sale of the entire island, these findings have fallen on deaf ears. The agency is refusing to acknowledge its authority to recommend a conservation sale — one where the developed, laboratory portion is sold to a private entity while virtually undisturbed habitats are managed by the Fish and Wildlife Service for future generations.

Complicating matters further, federal ownership means the island is un-zoned. If it were sold tomorrow, virtually anything goes. Fortunately, the New York town of Southold recognizes the potential for massive environmental degradation and is moving forward with a zoning safety net to limit uses of the island if it leaves federal hands. This is not a permanent solution, however. Town leaders come and go, variances can be requested, zones changed. Southold's leaders are doing everything in their power to conserve the island's wild lands, but the town alone can't provide the kind of long-range protection this spot deserves.

What can be done? Citizens concerned about the potential sale can contact their elected officials and the General Services Administration (comments on the Final Environmental Impact Statement can be submitted until mid-July) to talk about the importance of Plum Island to our region.

Our senators and representatives should continue their steadfast effort to decouple the sale of Plum Island from the funding of the Kansas facility; after the U.S. government pays for clean-up of the existing laboratory, it's unlikely there will be money left over for the new project. Finally, the General Services Administration must make use of the discretion Congress gave it by recommending and executing a conservation sale. Only then can we know this historic and ecologically critical space is saved.

Leah Schmalz is director of legislative and legal affairs for Save the Sound, a program of the Connecticut Fund for the Environment.